As the world has gotten louder–perhaps because “everyone knows” that 85 decibels is safe because the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders tells us “long or repeated exposure to sound at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss”–a vast uncontrolled experiment is taking place in the U.S., with 320 million subjects.

Remember, if it sounds too loud, it IS too loud! If you can’t carry on a normal conversation without straining to speak or to be heard, the ambient noise is above 75 A-weighted decibels, which also happens to be the auditory injury threshold.

Your ears are like your eyes or your knees. You only have two of them. Keep them away from loud noise and they should last you your entire life.